McClelland elaborates about the Plethora of blue collar jobs that were available in the 1970’s. A perfect example of shared prosperity is the story McClelland’s history teacher shared with him. His student dropped out of school and began working as an electrician’s assistant and showed up a year later to show off his brand new car to his teacher. During that time period, you didn’t have to be cultured or educated to live comfortably as a middle class citizen. McClelland believes that the prosperity ended due to the lack of government oversight. In order to revive the middle class earners, the government would have to raise minimum wages, higher taxes on passive wealth, and provide benefits for workers who don’t get any benefits from the company…
Martin, George-McKinley. "Jessie Redmon Fauset." The Black Renaissance in Washington. DC Public Library, 20 2003. Web. 18 Dec 2012.…
2. My favorite part of John Henry would be how he ready to die to provide. He told the Captain that he would be willing to do any job just to support his family. He worked himself to death in the mine doing everything he could. They buried him next to the tracks that he was working so hard to build. He died broke, but left a legacy of being a steel driving man.…
The piece that spoke to me most was “Duck, Duck, Noose” by Gary Simmons. The artist draws parallels to both the randomness of the acts of violence targeted at African Americans by members of the Ku Klux Klan from post-Civil War Construction through present, as well as pointing out racism is a cultural trait learned in early childhood. One of the most valuable social rights we have is the right to feel safe from violence whether it is in our home or walking down the street. When I look at this piece of art it brings to mind the full history of African-American culture. The heritage of these people began, not as voluntary citizens looking for a new land, but rather as victims of violence having been kidnapped from their homes and forced into…
A significant characteristic of Marshall’s paintings is unequivocally black skin tone of his figures. It is a development the artist says that came from an investigation into the invisibility of blacks in America and the unreasonably negative inferences associated with darkness. Marshall believes that you still have to catch people’s attention whenever you make something. The absolute beauty of his work speaks to an art that is simultaneously formally demanding and socially engaged. (Kerry James Marshall, PBS) Kerry James Marshall also shows the daily plight of socially planned public planning and critique this failed social engineering and how but still showing the daily pleasures and possibilities of the people who live there. (Smith, E., Marshall, K., 12) I chose him because I was intrigued by his accomplishments. There’s still minorities who are growing up and believe that they can’t achieve their goals because they believe it’s not possible or they gave up. Society needs to acknowledge minorities in order to restore hope in minorities. I believe that Kerry James Marshall has inspired minorities to reach for their…
Context: Foster begins to address initially that although one may not be a Christian, we must not refuse the impact that Christianity holds in our culture, specifically our literature. He further notes that this is the case due to Christianity holding the dominant religion/role in our society. A society, where writers are purposefully or subconsciously writing about Jesus Christ’s story among their very own.…
“No reference is made to blacks or slavery in any of the paintings. In the whole Rotunda, only a small bust of Martin Luther King Jr intrudes on an overall iconography of an America.” Robinson speaks on the miseducation of African Americans and how they are not taught about the Rotunda in the capital and how helped build slaves the White house, The United States Capitol and other government buildings. The content of the book can be closely related to culture appropriation. It goes back to the thought that Black people do not receive the rightful recognition that they deserve. Instead culture is being taken from them and turned into something that is seemingly “new.” The comparison between the two feed off of the distinct notion of inequality. In Robinson's previous book Defending the Spirit, he speaks on America’s racism. In The Debt America Owes to Black, he continues to speaking on racism but also tries to get America to acknowledge their wrongful actions and the extensive amount of financial debt they are in with the Black…
In the 1980’s, female artist addressed the dominance of cultural perceptions regarding female agency, pleasure, and spectatorship. In order to make their voice heard in a white male dominant art industry, they created works of art from paintings to films that challenged the social stereotypes and ideologies about female identity. This essay will define these three perceptions and examine the artworks from artist such as Julie Dash, Kobena Mercer , and Jenny Saville. These artists paved a way for the feminist movement through the use of disturbing the normative constructions of femininity, racial identity, and the body.…
Post-war American literature is booming with stories of freedom, hope, and love. One topic that seemed to emerge at this time was interracial relations or marriages between blacks and whites. Kate Chopin and Charles W. Chesnutt both wrote of these types of relationships but in very different ways and outcomes. Due to being…
Persons.” Jennifer V. Jackson and Mary E. Cothran. Journal of Black Studies , Vol. 33,…
From a historical slavery perspective, black women were required to work and be punished just as hard as black men (Hill, 2002). After emancipation, black women also filled traditionally male roles. These images of a “black woman” have thus made blackness an unflattering thing in women. Among other connotations and terms commonly used to describe black women are “ghetto”, “militant”, “aggressive” and more recently, the “angry black woman” (Wilder, 2010, pp. 195-196; Thompson and Keith, 2001). They are intimidating to society. These examples demonstrate how superimposing Anglo centered ideals of beauty and equating blackness to masculinity steals away the womanhood from a black woman. As will be illustrated, the physical preferences for lighter skinned women extend so far as to determine the marriage prospects of a black…
Jacob Lawrence has painted figurative and narrative pictures of the black community and black history for more than 60 years in a consistent modernist style, using expressive, strong design and flat areas of color. Jacob Lawrence was a great artist. During Harlem Renaissance, he helped establish African American artists. He gave lectures at Washington University, and he enjoyed working with students of all ages.…
Working can be as effortless as singing the words to your favorite song but it’s not always that simple. Arna Bontemps’s “A Black Man Talks of Reaping” creates a searing picture of not reaping what you sowed by alluding to the times of slavery through metaphor, imagery and diction. While Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “A Negro Love Song” paints a delightful image of a man and woman in love with its trochaic rhythm. It shares the use of imagery and diction with “Reaping” but it also uses tone.…
Bibliography: McBride, James. The Color of Water: A Black Man 's Tribute to His White Mother. New York: Riverhead Books, 1996. Print.…
One very important point of Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer essay on white esthetic describes the virtual monopoly exerted by white folks on the means of production and consumption of art in American history in an effort to ensure and perpetuate their often subtle racial domination. This subtlety of racial domination is further evidence by what Sander Gilman and Evelyn Nakano Glenn identified as symbolic violence or instances of internalize racism. Most often symbolic violence manifests itself as a cultural appropriation in the form of racist appropriation or anti-racist appropriation. This essay focus on showcasing an example of anti-racist appropriation in which the Duke, Ellington…